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I like catching fish, all fish. I prefer big fish, but I absolutely do not discriminate against the dinkers or little fish. I like wild, colorful trout and I like ugly fish. Sometimes, the ugly fish pull the hardest. The ugliness of a fish is highly subjective I understand, but Carp are ugly. However, Carp fishing with a fly rod is a blast and I highly recommend trying it out. This isn’t about Carp though. We’ll make it back to them eventually and briefly, but this is about trout. This is about catching lots of trout consistently, bruisers and dinkers alike. This is about nymphingRead More →

Each year, peaking in the early summer, I enjoy nothing so much as fly fishing on small streams for wild trout. It is, in fact, the most enjoyable form of angling. Within five minutes drive of my cabin is ten miles of catch-and-release trout stream that is loaded with wild trout. This creek is small. Very small. The county puts a few thousand run-of-the-mill stock rainbow trout in it each spring. But it is the brown trout that thrive. Wild browns that average 12 inches are common and when approached with a three or four weight fly rod they make for great angling. My guideRead More →

Spring trout fishing around Central New York continues to be very good. Temperatures have been holding pretty stable on most streams, hovering and swaying somewhere in high 50’s to low 60’s. Water flows are a little on the low side, but not bad. Bug activity and hatches increase on a daily basis and the trout are looking up! And, while Mike and I have been busy taking advantage of the fantastic trout fishing locally, there lies another, and very different, fishery a 4 1/2 – 5 1/2 hour drive to our east. This is Striper fishing. Striped Bass eat ferociously and are eager to takeRead More →

We all know that Spring, here in Upstate New York, can be a little bit, or a lot of bit, slow to arrive from year to year. Well… This year has been one of those years. While we’re hopeful for the start of Spring with seasonably warmer temperatures arriving this weekend, water temperatures around the lakes have been unsteady and less than ideal. We patiently wait to get on the lakes, but streams across the area have been on fire with trout eager to take a fly. As Spring temperatures year to year are unpredictable, there is one thing that remains pretty constant withRead More →

Twice a year trout migrate from the lakes into the streams and rivers that flow into them. Some species travel upstream to spawn in the fall, like brown trout, brook trout and salmon. Another species of trout, the rainbow trout, migrate upstream in the spring to spawn. Anglers take advantage of this bi-annual run of fish and stalk wary lake-run trout in the pools, runs, riffles and eddies in streams and creeks swollen with run-off. In the Finger Lakes on the first day of April each year hundreds of anglers descend upon the creeks flowing into the lakes to catch spawning rainbow trout. In some biological logicRead More →

The winter of 2017/2018 was NOT a typical winter in upstate New York. A typical winter around here has become difficult to define. A traditional winter in the northeast is one in which lake ice forms in late December, grows thick in January and stays solid through February before beginning a slow decay as winter transitions into Spring. Here in central New York we experienced several days above 45 degrees in late January and a couple days above 50 degrees in February. Such warm temperatures were coupled with rain and had a big impact on ice conditions. On some lakes and bays ice went from safeRead More →

Fact: As the winter progresses the thickness of ice on lakes will increase. In Central New York…Not-so-much. Global warming, climate change, NAFTA…I don’t know the cause but ice thickness on average has decreased. It was not uncommon for someone to drive up to us in a pick-up truck or a jeep while we sat on buckets jigging walleyes on Oneida Lake back in the 80’s. The ice often grew to two feet in thickness. Those days are gone. The fact is that recent trends in local weather seem to feature more extremes in un-seasonable temperatures. As an outdoor guide weather is the biggest factor I cannotRead More →

Each winter the arrival of safe ice on local lakes is something keenly anticipated by many. As deer season comes to an end and the Holidays arrive, hardcore hard water anglers can be found preparing gear, watching the thermometer and soliciting reports of safe ice from fellow anglers. For those that do not ice fish the following series of blogs will likely not entertain. For those who do ice fish but are new to the pastime, I will share with you some things I have learned in over 30 years of exploring frozen lakes in search of fish. Throughout the following posts I will defineRead More →

In Leon Chandlers’ boyhood he fished the same waters that I do today. I imagine him a teen with a fly rod in his hand roll casting a hand-tied callibaetis at dimpling browns. He was most likely fishing a nightcrawler at that age. The reason I fly fish the boyhood home of Leon Chandler is due to geography and proximity. Just coincidental. But, if not for Leon Chandler I may not fish with a fly rod at all. Leon Chandler was the catalyst of fly fishing and fly fishing products in America. He was a Catskill fly fisherman, Cortland native, and a gentleman who introduced American flyRead More →